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tv   [untitled]    April 1, 2012 5:00am-5:30am PDT

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but we would certainly hope that for the fleet week event, the is planned in october now, that 30- 32 would be ready. that is going to be the major televised event, and it would be good to have the team basis at that site rather than pier 80. those are the reasons for the request. supervisor chu: are there any races and events in october, fleet week? >> i apologize, mike martin would know exactly the date ranges for august, but i believe august 15 is the start of the racing in august. supervisor chu: thank you. so our timeline gets us to a may 10 potential star rated we are able to nail everything else down, and three months out, we are in early august, and some races could begin by that time. >> that is right. supervisor chu: colleagues, we have heard public comment on this item.
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i wonder if the committee would consider a motion to send the item out without recommendation at this time, given that there is a time constraint but also given the fact that we do not have a budget analyst report. i did not like to see items coming before us or us acting on it without a budget analyst report. i would prefer for us to send it out without recommendation. we should be getting a budget analyst report to the entire board today or tomorrow, so that will give us time to review it in advance of our tuesday broke -- tuesday vote. we do have an amendment as a whole we have to take ahead of time. we will do that without objection. in terms of the amended version, we will send that forward to the full board without recommendation -- or do that without objection. thank you. do we have any other items before us? >> that completes the agenda. supervisor chu: thank you. we are adjourned.
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supervisor chu: the, welcome to the regular meeting of the full budget and finance committee. i am joined by supervisor avalos, supervisor kim, supervisor cohen:n, and
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supervisor wiener will be joining us later. >> completed speaker cards as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items like a dog to they will appear on the april 3 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. supervisor chu: can you call item no. 1? >> hearing to receive updates for the fiscal year 20122013 and 2-2013 and 2013-2014. supervisor chu: we brought a number of topics to the extended committee to get an overview of the department and to provide early feedback before the budget is finalized with the mayor's office and the submission to us.
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>> good afternoon share, and members of the board. thank you for having us come to present a budget. joining me today is douglas legg, helping us prepare the two-year budget. it took a little bit of work, and the leadership has led us here. dpw, as you know, we have about 1116 employees. of the work maintains the city's roads. a lot of her work maintains many of the city's roads. we also maintain the street trees. a number of bridges and tunnels, and in addition, we managed over 158 city blocks, several
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thousand curb ramps, we answer to 311 about 110,000 calls a year. we're responsible for cleaning the streets. we're responsible for graffiti on private property. we have a team that works on many of the city's bomb programs and infrastructure projects. as you can see, about 70% of the work echoes on his work orders.
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we do receive some gas tax and some borrowed funds. and some general fund in addition to fees from st. use in developing, and a few other funds that include a with miscellaneous revenue. in terms of how it is broken up, which have several bureaus. the environmental services that does most of the street cleaning and most of the graffiti removal as far as the funds go to support that bureau. and on infrastructure and the design division, about 14%.
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project control has about 12%. and if you others that we mentioned, urban forestry has about 8%. a pretty good divide there. in terms of expenditures, this is the history. using the general fund the gas tax and road fund, you can see most of the general fund goes towards street cleaning, illegal dumping, graffiti, road repair, and permiting. the fiscal year 12, it is quite a bit of a decline in expenditures. and likewise, from 2008 to fiscal year 2012, we have 418 people in l.a..
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-- in 2008. supervisor chu: in terms of street cleaning, can you explain what that is? >> we are responsible for manual and mechanical street cleaning. we have a fleet of truck drivers that do the mechanical. that is probably 46 truckdrivers in the balance of the bureau. mostly people that graffiti, there are probably 30 or 40 people. a majority of the work force are the people that go out in trucks and actually sleep, minimally, many of our streets. we're out there cleaning up after events, and they are also a crew that worked 24-7. a majority of them in the
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morning, we have a good number of people that work on the swing shift at the number of people that work at night. supervisor chu: is there a reason why we do manual street cleaning otherwise -- aside from events? >> we have to neighborhoods where there is a limited mechanical street cleaning, and many years ago, we passed the act that does not allow us to force mechanical street cleaning in those neighborhoods. will of god and quite a number of times to introduce automatic street cleaning and we have encountered resistance. those operations involve manual street cleaners, and we try to make sure that we get the streets clean. we have, on occasion, been able
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to go into the neighborhoods, but obviously, it takes quite a bit of work. supervisor avalos: just a follow-up question on mechanical vs. manual street cleaning. when the trucks come by, and there is a truck in front of them, someone picking up debris, is that considered mechanical? or is the person under the manual street cleaning program. >> over the years, that has changed. those guys that are in front of the truck, going to the manual operation, we support the manual street cleaning operation on heavy routes, the commission or some of the busiest streets. how many of those routes, there
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is quite a bit of debris that the mechanical street cleaning will not be able to clean up. in a less busy routes, the manual sweeper's may drive buys, but they are way ahead. there are some neighborhoods in the mission where we have to have to trucks because of the density of people and the amount of debris that is picked up. it varies, but we think there is a good balance. we will be able to answer more calls and fulfill those needs. supervisor chu: thank you. on street repair, is that where pot holes would be? >> yes.
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supervisor chu: it's an interesting slide. supervisor avalos: we have the corridor program, does this follow under one of these categories here? where we have the sidewalk cleaners? >> the program as a hybrid of a partnership, and some of the new jobs now program is funding a number of positions. those employees are people we are training for job readiness. they have been supported by the manual street cleaning, most with the swing shift operation. cesar chavez, 245th street, they will be supported by supervisors that bring supplies to them and work with them.
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supervisor avalos: they are funded fully or partially by hsa? >> fully funded by hsa. some of the major budget changes as you stated earlier, approximately 124 direct services fte's that we reduced due to the composition of the city. we actually had to cut down on the general labour apprentice program. a lot of those crews work crews that horror working on supporting the landscape crew.
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we're also able to have about 47 managerial positions. a few manager positions, and they worked very hard in reducing overtime. the reduced the workmen's comp costs. and also materials and supplies. it also cuts on travel and training for employees. there have been able to reduce the fleet. in developing the budget, obviously, some of the strategies that the team has put forth is to look at, closely, the demand for service that continues to increase.
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we have had quite a number of cuts over the last few years. the value of our gas tax continues to decrease while the cost of labor is increasing. we have quite a number of bond and capital projects that are underway. we want to make sure that we preserve the cost services. some of the items that we talked about, street cleaning. have made sure the city is free from graffiti. identifying deficiencies and investing in the infrastructure that leads to creating more possible jobs.
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supervisor cohen: you mentioned there was a suspension of the general labour apprenticeship program. is it a suspension of the entire program, a portion of it? >> when we started the program, we started with about 120 people. a quick finish her with a finished in about two years, maybe a little more. due to budget constraints, we had to stagger the program. a lot of those individuals went to the work program. we weren't able to bring in new people during that time, there was a time where we weren't able to keep the number of people and the program due to funds. this year, we started a
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preliminary program. we have 15 that are in there. we're hoping that if we build more partnerships, we can increase the number of glasses. we're looking forward to the bond program, and it will hopefully be able to start another apprentice program. and oakley will be able to bring some more apprentices over there. and the tree-watering program is funded by the transportation authority fund. we are still trying to keep the apprentice programs going. we do see a huge opportunity with a lot of contracts that are coming on line. in a lot of the contract that the city gives, there are
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opportunities for contractors to hire apprentices, and we want to make sure that the tool is available to them. the total operating budget, as you can see, pretty steady over the last few years. for 12-13 and 13-14, the difference is the cream bar -- green bar. that is the road fund. otherwise, we really have been pretty steady, and hopefully we will see an increase in work orders. the staff ... dust and delivering many of these projects. supervisor chu: he will speak to the challenges with the
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presentation? >> yes, i can. the next slide shows the general fund hot gas tax and budget. you can see it is pretty steady, the increases mostly have to do with the cost of general allowances. you can see where those are mostly impacted. st. use mapping and revenue increases have also been increasing quite a bit in due to be picking up of the construction activity in the city. you can see the increases, otherwise we are pretty much steady. supervisor chu: and there was a significant drop of the general fund subsidy. it was a reflection of a particular project that was in
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2009, perhaps, that went away in 2010? >> the was the beginning of the economic downturn, so we don't see a lot of permits and things of that sort. >> that was really the first year that we took a really dramatic cuts. it is were the biggest drop in the accounts were. there was some shifting, you'll see the top lot of other revenues that went from 5.8 billion to 8.8 billion, and the think this is the first year that we budgeted tobacco tax revenues. that was essentially off- setting fund production. mostly, it really was pure cut,
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and it meant a pretty dramatic drop in services that year. supervisor chu: thank you. >> as we move forward, but its solutions for this year and next year, which are hoping to see an increase in the street use revenues due to permitting for the new construction activity that is starting to pick up. we do have some parking lot revenue, one of the parking lots done on the embarcadero. eliminating positions the been the agency for the last one or two years. we hope to eliminate a number of those including some retirements
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that we have had recently. we are exploring some realignment in terms of our identical collections. lee will be looking at trying to work something out with them. challenges and opportunities of the next few years, as many of you know, we continue to relinquish trees. as we relinquish trees, they are in the process and we need to make sure that those trees are
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turned over and ready for acceptance. we are starting to see -- those are some of the challenges that we have. we're hoping to relinquish 6000 trees. the total number is 23,000 trees over 67 years. that is one of the big challenges. supervisor avalos: there is bound to be a question on relinquishment, and we just had a tree planting of that in my district. -- event in my district. it was a fluff event. there was a chronicle reporter that was their writing about how great it was, but actually wrote about the relinquishment issue.
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my question is, as we are doing the relinquishment, what are we seeing is the impact on the trees? do we have any idea what is happening with the trees that we're no longer taking care of? are there any programs that are available that would help people have a hardship around taking care of the trees that they can access? >> her about 103,000 or 105,000 street trees. another 30,000 or so that are currently maintained by property owners, and we have the 23,000 or so that are currently
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maintained by the city. and we are in the process of turning over. most of these trees, as you know, when we turn them over, made whole. trees need to be pruned. in terms of the impact, it is tough to see down the way as we turn over trees. we do have a public hearing as part of the hosting or noticing of the trees. we have been able to hear most of those requests. at this time, we feel that people are in acceptance -- supervisor avalos: if a person who, years from now, no longer has the ability to pay for or
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physically able to do the work on a tree in front of his or her home, does the person have any recourse about how the tree can get cared for? >> ultimately, it is the property owner's responsibility. here we do come out for quite a number of events. i think on the bigger picture, the urban forestry council and planning department are looking into the french funding methods that can be brought into play to maintain trees into the right of way. we're looking at the study in seeing what that study reveals. at the end of the day, it makes sense for a city to maintain the trees within the right of way.
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keeping a standard and also for assisting, but due to no funding and the lack of funds, i think we are sharing the burden as we try to figure out what the next steps are. >> be recall a time in the city have the funding that was able to maintain a consistent level of care for trees in the city? and if we have the city that once again was not able to provide that level of care, what would that cost? >> i think that what i was part of the study five for six years ago, we were looking at 30 million a year. we have since increased some of the canopy cover, so i don't
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know what it will be. at that time it was about 30 million. it was about a seven-year cycle. supervisor avalos: there are certain parts of san francisco where you have a real iconic view of trees. i am thinking for some, vernal height, down to about twenty third street or twenty second street, really dense that a large trees. persia evidence as another one that i am familiar with or you have these large willow trees. it really seems like part of what the city provides in terms of the urban forest and canopy. are those trees going to be
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subject to relinquishment? it seems like they are different from other trees that are not quite as densely packed in the urban areas. >> folsom street is an example. they are on a cycle of maintenance under the department's jurisdiction. we do look at those types of corridors. there are other corridors that will likely fall into it. >> i think those types of corridor's don't make a lot of sense because there seems to be of real higher level and more densely packed population of trees that seems like the city is projecting an image of itself